About Me

 

Wel­come to my blog! If you are a mil­len­ni­al who hates the rat race, this is the place to be!

I start­ed this to doc­u­ment my jour­ney to Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence. My goal is to help guide my fel­low mil­len­ni­als (that’s right, all you youn­gins out there. Yes, you.) along sim­i­lar paths to finan­cial free­dom. Mil­len­ni­als are the group of peo­ple born any­where from rough­ly the ear­ly eight­ies to the 2000’s. Basi­cal­ly, at the time of writ­ing, any­one who can dri­ve up to 30 some odd year olds.

A lot of the finan­cial blogs out there are ded­i­cat­ed to old­er peo­ple who are set in their lives and want to make changes.

My blog is not for them.

If you’re old­er and read­ing, FANTASTIC. I look for­ward to hear­ing about any sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences you might have had in the past! I’m writ­ing to the young kids in col­lege, the ones who’ve just grad­u­at­ed and the young pro­fes­sion­als. Read more about my goal for the blog in My Man­i­festo.

Becom­ing finan­cial­ly aware at a younger age has pros and cons. The best part about being young is we haven’t had as much time to make so many bad mis­takes that are set in stone. We’re the finan­cial equiv­a­lent of a clean slate. We also have tons of time for com­pound inter­est to work its mag­ic and make us lots of free mon­ey, as well as the time to ride out a bear market.

One con is just a sim­ple lack of expe­ri­ence. There are a lot of life lessons to be learned in the adult world, and I’m hop­ing that we can grow and learn together!

I sup­pose I should intro­duce myself a bit bet­ter. I’m Gwen. I’m 29, locat­ed in Wash­ing­ton, DC, and some­what hap­pi­ly employed in the IT sec­tor. From an ear­ly age, I’ve always had an obses­sion with mon­ey. When I was younger, I was obsessed with obtain­ing more of it so I could have more things, name­ly can­dy from the gas sta­tion and replace­ment fees for lost library cards. Seri­ous­ly, I don’t know what it was about those slip­pery lit­tle bug­gers, but I must’ve lost at least a dozen cards. Same goes for house keys.

If you would like to read more about my back­ground, check out Back­ground: Part 1 and the oth­er half of the sto­ry in Part 2.

For­tu­nate­ly for my present and future self, I haven’t lost that obses­sion, but I have set new sights: Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence, Ear­ly Retire­ment, Fuck You mon­ey, what­ev­er you want to call it, I want it. I interned at a For­tune 500 com­pa­ny the sum­mer before my last semes­ter in col­lege and dis­cov­ered work­ing 8+ hours a day kin­da sucked ass. Like, a lot. It seemed like I was con­stant­ly doing only one of 3 activ­i­ties: sleep­ing, eat­ing, or work­ing. Where was all the free time I had in col­lege? Even week­ends didn’t feel like enough. Some­thing had to give, because the thought of work­ing in an office until I’m 65 makes me want to shoot myself in the face.

Enter FI.

My orig­i­nal goal was accu­mu­lat­ing enough assets to retire at age 35 in 2025. Now I’ve stepped back a lit­tle bit. I’m still on the path to Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence, but I no longer wish to retire insane­ly ear­ly. Instead, I’ve cho­sen to enjoy life a lit­tle bit more on the way. I moved to the third-high­est cost of liv­ing mar­ket in the US (Wash­ing­ton, DC) to expe­ri­ence life in a dif­fer­ent part of the coun­try. It’s been an inter­est­ing ride so far and I’m eager­ly await­ing to see how this exper­i­ment turns out.

So, with all that being said, wel­come to FIRE‑y Mil­len­ni­als! Bet­ter buck­le up because it’s going to be a wild ride!